Walking with luggage in hand, through the stone gateway of Monsaraz castle in southeast Portugal, Monica and I exchanged knowing sentiments. Monsaraz is a precious little Portuguese town that sits within the walls of a medieval castle, one of many military fortresses that look across the border to Spain. It’s an authentic castle that’s gone public. Known to the locals as the Ninho das Aguias or "Eagle’s Nest," outside you’re greeted only by a clock tower above the main gate. While inside, built around a large rectangular courtyard is an unnamed bar, a post office, a restaurant and a mini-market. A lively art museum is buried under the stairs of the rampart at the far end, under the Torre das Feiticeiras or "Witches Tower." During festivals, the open square serves as an entertainment stage and once covered with red loam, the bullfight ring. In Portugal, the bull uses the matadors as bowling pins and always lives to gore another day.

Completely enclosed, Monsaraz is a gorgeous ancient village with narrow, cobblestone streets and whitewashed houses. Old men sit on benches, seldom saying anything; old women in black sit in doorways, knitting or weaving, their black shawls shading their eyes from the searing sun and curious tourists, as well.

After settling into one of only two small Portuguese pensions in the castle, we picked lemons off the tree that grew up past our second-floor balcony. We marveled at the simple rural life that exists within a European town: the backyard garden was fully staked and flourishing with every vegetable that climbs, chickens pecked away at grain amongst the pebbled soil, the view was breathtaking down the green valley and up the red path to the next town on the adjacent hill, which is also a castle. A poor man’s Tuscany, it was absolutely seductive; and without saying a word, you know you could live in a quiet piece of paradise, just like this.

We had dinner at the Lumumba Restaurant, the only two people sitting on the hearth of the café’s fireplace. We took our brandies out of the bar and sat high atop the castle wall, watching daylight disappear in a dying fireball over Alentejo. We walked back to the room along the same wide rampart looking off toward the Rio Guadiana into the orange glow of a million sunflowers somewhere over the border of Spain. This must be heaven; it’s certainly high enough.

All around us are sun-baked plains broken up by neatly tiered farm gardens and dotted with cork and olive trees. Not far is the town of Ruguengos De Monsaraz where you can sit on the patio of the adega, tasting Terras del Rei whites and reds as strains of a sad Fado song plays across the vineyards.

At midnight the church bells strike a dozen lazy notes and you’re asleep before the echo of the last one peters out. It’s a magical place, this castle, that erases your life’s routine and replaces it with an entirely new world, that is in fact, old world Europe.

At three in the morning the horny rooster starts lining up his night’s work. It begins with a cluck, then a few more, then faster and louder until finally the whole coop is in sexual chaos. You can hear some chickens scurrying to escape, others flopping against the walls of the roost. This racket goes on until you find yourself bare foot and naked on a cold balcony throwing hard, unripened lemons at them and screaming: Shut up you bunch a broilers! Shut up or we’ll eat your young for breakfast, over easy! Now the old man who rented us the room is in the backyard yelling things at us that you know are not in the guidebook glossary of terms.

An hour later when the rooster is spent, you return to bed, promising to eat nothing but grilled chicken until you leave the country. At a quarter to four, some drunk on a dirt bike does circles around the castle. And the church bells clang away, four at four, five at five, six at six, keeping you awake ‘til dawn.

You wake up groggy and cranky and you think to yourself: Oh yeah, I could live here. The problem is, I could never sleep here.

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